1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to chess-type games.
2. Description of Prior Art
Chess is an ancient board game played throughout the world. It consists of two players maneuvering his/her own set of playing pieces consisting of eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, one queen, and one king on an 8.times.8 checkerboard. The object of the game is to checkmate the opposing player. Competitions range from casual family grudge matches to international competitions.
Various new pieces have been introduced throughout the years. H. E. Bird developed a chess game with the addition of two new pieces: the chancellor which is a combination of the knight and the rook; the archbishop which is a combination of the knight and the bishop. The new pieces were placed beside the king and the queen. Roughly fifty years later, Capablanca created a game with the same pieces, but placed the new pieces between the bishops and the knights. U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,793, U.S. Pat. No. 5,690,334, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,692,754 also incorporate the use of several new pieces. These are all successful in sparking interest by mixing new and traditional pieces while staying as close to the standard rules of chess as possible.
In an effort to involve more players, various expanded boards with a plurality of pieces have been created. Double Chess and Frere's Four-Handed Chess are very similar in that they use two sets of standard chess pieces and are played on an 8.times.8 board with four 3.times.8 extensions on the sides. The only major difference is that in Frere's game the partner takes control of his/her checkmated partner's pieces whereas in Double Chess, the partner's turn is skipped. U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,669 uses the same board and pieces but adds a new option for pawn advancement. U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,187 uses a similar pawn variant but is played on a larger board (the extensions are 4.times.8). U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,578 uses the same larger board and has the central playing area further subdivided by two diagonal lines. U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,666 uses an 8.times.8 board with four 2.times.8 extensions and two sets of standard chess pieces while U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,130 goes one step further by adding two squares to each extension and placing two additional knights on those squares. U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,349 uses two sets of a standard chess set and is played on a 12.times.12 board with four 2.times.8 extensions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,147,360 uses a 10.times.l0 central playing which is subdivided by two diagonal lines and has four 4.times.10 extensions on each side; furthermore, it has two new additional pieces.
Many new variations of chess have been invented which have new pieces or allow for more social interest and interaction by the addition of multiple player possibilities. The problem with a two player chess game expanded by the addition of new playing pieces is that the game is too similar to standard chess, which has remained the same for hundreds of years. The same problem exists with multiple player chess games which use a plurality of standard chess pieces on an expanded board. Furthermore, the expanded playing area is simply too large for the range of most of the standard playing pieces; One of the reasons chess has remained same for such a long time is that the abilities of the pieces work well within the limits of the board.